Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
WHO Update H7N9 Avian Flu
As of 19 April 2013 (18:00 CET), the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China notified WHO of an additional four laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H7N9) virus from Jiangsu 1 (0) and Zhejiang 3 (0). No additional death has been reported.
Details of these four cases are as follows:
- A 54 year old male, from Jiangsu Province, became ill on 9 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 15 April 2013. He is currently in critical condition. On 17 April 2013, he was laboratory confirmed.
- A 43 year old male, unemployed, from Zhejiang Province, became ill on 12 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 15 April 2013. He was laboratory confirmed on 18 April 2013.
- A 48 year old male, from Zhejiang Province, became ill on 11 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 17 April 2013. He was laboratory confirmed on 19 April 2013.
- A 66 year old female, from Zhejiang Province, with history of exposure to live poultry had onset of illness on 10 April 2013. She was hospitalized on 17 April 2013 and was laboratory confirmed on 19 April 2013.
To date, there are a total of 91 laboratory confirmed human cases with influenza A(H7N9) virus including seventeen fatalities in China reported from four Provinces: Anhui 3 (1), Henan 3 (0), Jiangsu 22 (3) and Zhejiang 30 (2) and two Municipalities: Beijing 1 (0) and Shanghai 32 (11). Currently, 67 patients are hospitalized and seven have been discharged.
Influenza A(H7N9) is one of a subgroup of influenza viruses that normally circulate among birds. Until recently, this virus had not been seen in people. However, human infections have now been detected.
As yet, there is limited information about the scope of the disease the virus causes and about the source of exposure. The disease is of concern because most patients have been severely ill. There is no indication thus far that it can be transmitted between people, but both animal-to-human and human-to-human routes of transmission are being actively investigated.
There are reports from some media outlets that human to human transmission is now suspected in a number of cases though WHO have not confirmed this.
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Chris Carrington of The Daily Sheeple.
Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up!
WHO Update H7N9 Avian Flu
Sunday, April 21, 2013
WHO Update H7N9 Avian Flu
As of 19 April 2013 (18:00 CET), the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China notified WHO of an additional four laboratory-confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H7N9) virus from Jiangsu 1 (0) and Zhejiang 3 (0). No additional death has been reported.
Details of these four cases are as follows:
- A 54 year old male, from Jiangsu Province, became ill on 9 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 15 April 2013. He is currently in critical condition. On 17 April 2013, he was laboratory confirmed.
- A 43 year old male, unemployed, from Zhejiang Province, became ill on 12 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 15 April 2013. He was laboratory confirmed on 18 April 2013.
- A 48 year old male, from Zhejiang Province, became ill on 11 April 2013 and was hospitalized on 17 April 2013. He was laboratory confirmed on 19 April 2013.
- A 66 year old female, from Zhejiang Province, with history of exposure to live poultry had onset of illness on 10 April 2013. She was hospitalized on 17 April 2013 and was laboratory confirmed on 19 April 2013.
To date, there are a total of 91 laboratory confirmed human cases with influenza A(H7N9) virus including seventeen fatalities in China reported from four Provinces: Anhui 3 (1), Henan 3 (0), Jiangsu 22 (3) and Zhejiang 30 (2) and two Municipalities: Beijing 1 (0) and Shanghai 32 (11). Currently, 67 patients are hospitalized and seven have been discharged.
Influenza A(H7N9) is one of a subgroup of influenza viruses that normally circulate among birds. Until recently, this virus had not been seen in people. However, human infections have now been detected.
As yet, there is limited information about the scope of the disease the virus causes and about the source of exposure. The disease is of concern because most patients have been severely ill. There is no indication thus far that it can be transmitted between people, but both animal-to-human and human-to-human routes of transmission are being actively investigated.
There are reports from some media outlets that human to human transmission is now suspected in a number of cases though WHO have not confirmed this.
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Chris Carrington of The Daily Sheeple.
Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up!
WHO Update H7N9 Avian Flu
Monday, April 15, 2013
Assault On Gold Update
I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing. With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars is increasing, the price or exchange value of the dollar is set up to fall.
A fall in the dollar’s exchange rate would push up import prices and, thereby, domestic inflation, and the Fed would lose control over interest rates. The bond market would collapse and with it the values of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big too fail” balance sheets. The financial system would be in turmoil, and panic would reign.
Rapidly rising bullion prices were an indication of loss of confidence in the dollar and were signaling a drop in the dollar’s exchange rate. The Fed used naked shorts in the paper gold market to offset the price effect of a rising demand for bullion possession. Short sales that drive down the price trigger stop-loss orders that automatically lead to individual sales of bullion holdings once their loss limits are reached.
According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.
A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.
In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.
People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.
Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.
Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $ 1,550, that comes to $ 24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?
What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $ 73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $ 73 dollars 16 million times, or $ 1,168,000,000.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.
I believe that the authorities would like to drive the gold price down further and will, if they can, hit the gold market twice more next week and put gold at $ 1,400 per ounce or lower. The successive declines could perhaps spook individual holders of physical gold and result in actual net sales of physical gold as people reduced their holdings of the metal.
However, bullion dealer Bill Haynes told kingworldnews.com that last Friday bullion purchasers among the public outpaced sellers by 50 to 1, and that the premiums over the spot price on gold and silver coins are the highest in decades. I myself checked with Gainesville Coins and was told that far more buyers than sellers had responded to the price drop.
Unless the authorities have the actual metal with which to back up the short selling, they could be met with demands for deliveries. Unable to cover the shorts with real metal, the scheme would be exposed.
Do the authorities have the metal with which to cover shorts? I do not know. However, knowledgeable dealers are suspicious. Some think that US physical stocks of gold were used up in sales in efforts to disrupt the rise in the gold price from $ 272 in December 2000 to $ 1,900 in 2011. They point to Germany’s recent request that the US return the German gold stored in the US, and to the US government’s reply that it would return the gold piecemeal over seven years. If the US has the gold, why not return it to Germany?
The clear implication is that the US cannot deliver the gold.
Andrew Maguire also reports that foreign central banks, especially China, are loading up on physical gold at the low prices made possible by the short selling. If central banks are using their dollar holdings to purchase bullion at bargain prices, the likely results will be pressure on the dollar’s exchange value and a declining market supply of physical bullion. In other words, by trying to protect the dollar from its quantitative easing policy, the Fed might be hastening the dollar’s demise.
Possibly the Fed fears a dollar crisis or derivative blowup is nearing and is trying to reset the gold/dollar price prior to the outbreak of trouble. If ill winds are forecast, the Fed might feel it is better positioned to deal with crisis if the price of bullion is lower and confidence in bullion as a refuge has been shaken.
In addition to short selling that is clearly intended to drive down the gold price, orchestration is also indicated by the advance announcements this month first from brokerage houses and then from Goldman Sachs that hedge funds and institutional investors would be selling their gold positions. The purpose of these announcements was to encourage individual investors to get out of gold before the big boys did. Does anyone believe that hedge funds and Wall Street would announce their sales in advance so the small fry can get out of gold at a higher price than they do?
If these advanced announcements are not orchestration, what are they?
I see the orchestrated effort to suppress the price of gold and silver as a sign that the authorities are frightened that trouble is brewing that they cannot control unless there is strong confidence in the dollar. Otherwise, what is the point of the heavy short selling and orchestrated announcements of gold sales in advance of the sales?
NOTE: Readers point out that gold weights are based on metric tons and Troy ounces. 500 metric tons of gold would be 16,075,000 troy ounces. This changes the arithmetic slightly but not the point.
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by Paul Craig Roberts of Institute for Political Economy.
About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Visit his web site at the Institute for Political Economy.
This article has been posted with permission from Dr. Paul Craig Roberts.
Copyright Paul Craig Roberts 2012.
Assault On Gold Update
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Update: Assault On Gold
I was the first to point out that the Federal Reserve was rigging all markets, not merely bond prices and interest rates, and that the Fed is rigging the bullion market in order to protect the US dollar’s exchange value, which is threatened by the Fed’s quantitative easing.
PaulCraigRoberts.com
April 14, 2013
With the Fed adding to the supply of dollars faster than the demand for dollars is increasing, the price or exchange value of the dollar is set up to fall.
A fall in the dollar’s exchange rate would push up import prices and, thereby, domestic inflation, and the Fed would lose control over interest rates. The bond market would collapse and with it the values of debt-related derivatives on the “banks too big too fail” balance sheets. The financial system would be in turmoil, and panic would reign.
Rapidly rising bullion prices were an indication of loss of confidence in the dollar and were signaling a drop in the dollar’s exchange rate. The Fed used naked shorts in the paper gold market to offset the price effect of a rising demand for bullion possession. Short sales that drive down the price trigger stop-loss orders that automatically lead to individual sales of bullion holdings once their loss limits are reached.
According to Andrew Maguire, on Friday, April 12, the Fed’s agents hit the market with 500 tons of naked shorts. Normally, a short is when an investor thinks the price of a stock or commodity is going to fall. He wants to sell the item in advance of the fall, pocket the money, and then buy the item back after it falls in price, thus making money on the short sale. If he doesn’t have the item, he borrows it from someone who does, putting up cash collateral equal to the current market price. Then he sells the item, waits for it to fall in price, buys it back at the lower price and returns it to the owner who returns his collateral. If enough shorts are sold, the result can be to drive down the market price.
A naked short is when the short seller does not have or borrow the item that he shorts, but sells shorts regardless. In the paper gold market, the participants are betting on gold prices and are content with the monetary payment. Therefore, generally, as participants are not interested in taking delivery of the gold, naked shorts do not need to be covered with the physical metal.
In other words, with naked shorts, no physical metal is actually sold.
People ask me how I know that the Fed is rigging the bullion price and seem surprised that anyone would think the Fed and its bullion bank agents would do such a thing, despite the public knowledge that the Fed is rigging the bond market and the banks with the Fed’s knowledge rigged the Libor rate. The answer is that the circumstantial evidence is powerful.
Consider the 500 tons of paper gold sold on Friday. Begin with the question, how many ounces is 500 tons? There are 2,000 pounds to one ton. 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds. There are 16 ounces to one pound, which comes to 16 million ounces of short sales on Friday.
Who has 16 million ounces of gold? At the beginning gold price that day of about $ 1,550, that comes to $ 24,800,000,000. Who has that kind of money?
What happens when 500 tons of gold sales are dumped on the market at one time or on one day? Correct, it drives the price down. Investors who want to get out of large positions would spread sales out over time so as not to lower their sales proceeds. The sale took gold down by about $ 73 per ounce. That means the seller or sellers lost up to $ 73 dollars 16 million times, or $ 1,168,000,000.
Who can afford to lose that kind of money? Only a central bank that can print it.
I believe that the authorities would like to drive the gold price down further and will, if they can, hit the gold market twice more next week and put gold at $ 1,400 per ounce or lower. The successive declines could perhaps spook individual holders of physical gold and result in actual net sales of physical gold as people reduced their holdings of the metal.
However, bullion dealer Bill Haynes told kingworldnews.com that last Friday bullion purchasers among the public outpaced sellers by 50 to 1, and that the premiums over the spot price on gold and silver coins are the highest in decades. I myself checked with Gainesville Coins and was told that far more buyers than sellers had responded to the price drop.
Unless the authorities have the actual metal with which to back up the short selling, they could be met with demands for deliveries. Unable to cover the shorts with real metal, the scheme would be exposed.
Do the authorities have the metal with which to cover shorts? I do not know. However, knowledgeable dealers are suspicious. Some think that US physical stocks of gold were used up in sales in efforts to disrupt the rise in the gold price from $ 272 in December 2000 to $ 1,900 in 2011. They point to Germany’s recent request that the US return the German gold stored in the US, and to the US government’s reply that it would return the gold piecemeal over seven years. If the US has the gold, why not return it to Germany?
The clear implication is that the US cannot deliver the gold.
Andrew Maguire also reports that foreign central banks, especially China, are loading up on physical gold at the low prices made possible by the short selling. If central banks are using their dollar holdings to purchase bullion at bargain prices, the likely results will be pressure on the dollar’s exchange value and a declining market supply of physical bullion. In other words, by trying to protect the dollar from its quantitative easing policy, the Fed might be hastening the dollar’s demise.
Possibly the Fed fears a dollar crisis or derivative blowup is nearing and is trying to reset the gold/dollar price prior to the outbreak of trouble. If ill winds are forecast, the Fed might feel it is better positioned to deal with crisis if the price of bullion is lower and confidence in bullion as a refuge has been shaken.
In addition to short selling that is clearly intended to drive down the gold price, orchestration is also indicated by the advance announcements this month first from brokerage houses and then from Goldman Sachs that hedge funds and institutional investors would be selling their gold positions. The purpose of these announcements was to encourage individual investors to get out of gold before the big boys did. Does anyone believe that hedge funds and Wall Street would announce their sales in advance so the small fry can get out of gold at a higher price than they do?
If these advanced announcements are not orchestration, what are they?
I see the orchestrated effort to suppress the price of gold and silver as a sign that the authorities are frightened that trouble is brewing that they cannot control unless there is strong confidence in the dollar. Otherwise, what is the point of the heavy short selling and orchestrated announcements of gold sales in advance of the sales?
*****
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
Intellihub.com
Update: Assault On Gold
Friday, April 5, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Half of Detroit Properties Have Not Paid Taxes; Update on Detroit Bankruptcy
The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that’s left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes.
The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don’t Pay Taxes
Nearly half of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records.The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of the city’s taxable parcels are delinquent on their 2011 bills. Some $ 246.5 million in taxes and fees went uncollected, about half of which was due Detroit and the rest to other entities, including Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools and the library.
Delinquency is so pervasive that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes last year, The News found. Many of those who don’t pay question why they should in a city that struggles to light its streets or keep police on them.
“Why pay taxes?” asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $ 2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. “Why should I send them taxes when they aren’t supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came.”
Update on Detroit Bankruptcy
Detroit is financially and morally bankrupt yet the governor refuses to make that declaration. A Review team says Detroit faces financial crisis, has no plan to fix it so why won’t the governor act?
For the second time in a year, a state review team has found Detroit is in a financial emergency that requires Gov. Rick Snyder to intervene in City Hall.But this time, if Snyder agrees that a financial emergency exists, the governor’s choices are more limited. He could appoint an emergency manager to keep Michigan’s largest city from plunging into bankruptcy, experts say, or he could continue state financial supervision through a new consent agreement, which seems a faint possibility.
State Treasurer Andy Dillon ruled out a bankruptcy filing at this time.
The six-member review team unanimously concluded in a report released Tuesday that the city failed to restructure its debt-laden bureaucracy under the financial consent agreement signed in April and that Detroit’s financial crisis requires Snyder’s intervention “because no satisfactory plan exists to resolve a serious financial problem.”
Chapter 9 bankruptcy is “always a possibility but I don’t think the city should go through (Chapter) 9 to cure its ailments,” he added.
The review team said the city’s charter adds “numerous restrictions” and hurdles for closing departments, canceling contracts and the type of wholesale restructuring financial experts say is necessary to make city government live within its means.
Restrictions? Who Cares?
In bankruptcy, restrictions go out the window. So do union contracts and pensions. Since all of that needs to go out the window, what’s holding the governor back?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Half of Detroit Properties Have Not Paid Taxes; Update on Detroit Bankruptcy